sauce for the goose
From this NYT story on the dangers of talking/texting on your cellphone while driving:
Others cite more fundamental reasons to block any such legislation. “To me, the death of freedom is far worse than the risk of talking on the phone while driving,” said Carl Wimmer, a state representative in Salt Lake City who successfully fought a bill this year to ban talking while driving. “Why pick on cellphones?” he asked, noting that distraction comes in many forms. “You can’t legislate against stupidity.”
Wouldn't this be an argument against drunk-driving laws also? Especially since there’s evidence to suggest that talking on a cellphone while driving is as dangerous as driving drunk, while texting is even more dangerous?
Putting my question another way: is there an argument in favor of allowing phoning and texting while driving that wouldn't also be an argument for repealing DUI laws — assuming that the research noted above is accurate? Obviously, if phoning and texting are in fact less dangerous than driving drunk, my question doesn't apply. But if the research is right, then, to paraphrase Rep. Wimmer, why pick on drinking?
I think one point to make here is that even if the research is accurate (I haven’t paid enough attention one way or another to say for sure), the difference is that driving while using a phone can only ever make you drive like a .08 driver (which is really not much: some women can achieve that BAC by having only two drinks in an hour). Alcohol has a scaling effect that cell phones don’t — you can keep drinking and getting drunker, far past .08, which many people could achieve by having three beers in about two hours.
And it’s actually at those higher levels where the problems tend to occur. The serious problems related to drunk driving tend to result from drivers with BACs of .15 or higher. Cell phone distraction levels don’t ratchet up in the same way, and thus are unlikely to be as dangerous.
And, I would guess, cell phone distraction probably isn’t continuous, and you can make an easy choice to turn it off at any time. If I get into a car with my phone and talk on it for 10 minutes of a 35 minute drive, it’s probably much, much safer than if I get into the driver’s seat after several drinks.
— Peter Suderman · Jul 19, 04:03 PM · #
And as far as the texting-is-worse argument, well, that makes sense. But then shouldn’t you also ban books, newspapers, and maps? Reading in the car — looking away from the road for an extended period of time to do anything — is not smart!
— Peter Suderman · Jul 19, 04:07 PM · #
Very good point about non-continuous vs. continuous dangers, Peter. I’m just trying to figure out whether it’s possible to have reasonably consistent laws in these matters. If we were able to go back to zero and decide what prohibitions we need to make on drivers, without reference to history, what would we do?
— Alan Jacobs · Jul 19, 04:21 PM · #
Yeah, it’s a good question, and I don’t actually know. I have friends who say the legal limit should be pushed to .14, or that there shouldn’t be one at all — that we should punish those whose actions actually cause harm (accidents, death, etc.), but not punish behavior that’s merely potentially dangerous. And then there’s the zero-tolerance movement, which wrongly (I think) but understandably wants to ban anyone from driving with even a trace of alcohol in their blood.
By most estimates, drunk driving kills more Americans each year than have been lost in the entire Iraq war. So it seems like a serious problem. And the problem isn’t that people are hurting themselves so much as that they’re putting others in danger. Shooting guns for fun in the middle a city is probably not going to kill anyone, but we should outlaw it anyway because it puts others at risk. Same with drunk driving. On the other hand, alcohol and driving are both so thoroughly woven into the fabric of American culture that I don’t really know how to excise one or the other. What level of risk exposure should governments allow individuals to force on others? I tend to be both extremely risk averse and have little tolerance for nannying, so I’m sort of stuck on this (though if I had to decide, I’d probably leave cell phones and texting alone and raise the BAC to .12 or so).
— Peter Suderman · Jul 19, 04:53 PM · #
Another complication: drunk driving tends to happen more often during those hours when the roads are relatively sparsely populated — but phoning and texting happen all the time, and are practiced by far more people. So the aggregate danger of phoning and texting is surely considerably greater than the aggregate danger of drunk driving, even if case-by-case drunk driving is worse.
Just a complication, not a recommended course of action. I frankly don’t know how to manage all these trade-offs, and am probably inconsistent. I’d ban texting and phoning in a minute — largely because in the last few years I’ve spent so much time dodging people who can’t stay in their lanes because of their cellphones — but I would be horrified if the interstate speed limits were lowered again to 55, even though that might do more to save lives and crashes.
— Alan Jacobs · Jul 19, 06:00 PM · #
It seems to me that the fundamental difference between drunk driving and driving while on the phone is that alcohol also impairs one’s judgement in addition to one’s reflexes while cell phones do not. People who have been drinking heavily can’t really be trusted to make the proper call about whether they should be driving or not, so limiting their freedom makes sense in a way it doesn’t for cell phone users.
— includedmiddle · Jul 19, 06:33 PM · #
The article in the post indicated that the drivers on cell phones were objectively worse at driving than the people who drove with an alcohol level of .08. Wouldn’t that make talking on cell phones while driving more pernicious than driving drunk? A driver who’s had a few drinks might tend to drive more carefully, knowing she might be impaired; a person talking on a cell phone believes himself to be unimpaired, and therefore won’t even make the attempt to adjust for his actual impairment.
— David Malone · Jul 19, 07:47 PM · #
Nice question, Alan. As a question about ideal consistency, I think that banning texting or calling while driving introduces other gray areas/irrationalities of the law. My cellphone, like an increasing number of phones these days, can be used as a GPS device, and there’s no practical way for law enforcement to tell whether it was being used for directions or texting. But we wouldn’t want (I assume) go whole hog, and ban any use of GPS while driving—it’s both commonplace, and has an obvious upside.
Of course, you can make even finer distinctions, and note that most standalone GPS services can announce directions outloud, are mounted below the car mirror, etc, making them a bit safer. But I’m not confident you could avoid weird edge cases here.
— Justin · Jul 19, 08:01 PM · #
Drunk drivers and cell-phone texters are two of the biggest perceived dangers to those of us who spend a lot of time bicycling on our highways, so I have a special interest in this topic.
Perhaps the solution would be heavy penalties for those who hit peds and bicycles. The 1982 movie “Vokzal dlya dvoikh” is based on the premise that the penalty for killing a pedestrian (at night, when it was raining and hard to see) was 3 years in a Siberian prison camp. If the pedestrian had been drunk, the penalty would have been less. And even though the gulag was a relatively friendly one, it was not one where prisoners were well fed. Dunno whether or not this was true to life or whether it had the desired deterrent effect.
They didn’t have cell phones and texting back then, but if they had, Eldar Ryazanov would have found a way to work it into one of his films. He seemed to use some of his films to introduce people to new developments in western consumer technology, including such things as installing a tape player in a car.
— The Spokesrider · Jul 19, 09:10 PM · #
It’s best for us to police ourselves but some people don’t. Still, I think the law is a good idea. I’m not afraid to admit that my awareness and decision-making abilities decrease when I’m talking while driving. Once I crossed two lanes without much conscious awareness while in the middle of an absorbing conversation. I rarely use my phone in the car while driving but when I do I just break the law for the few seconds it takes for me to put the phone on speaker and lay it on the seat next to me. I’m not messing with a headset.
— Joules · Jul 19, 11:25 PM · #
Why don’t we just get rid of traffic rules altogether? Scrap driver’s licenses and license plates while we’re at it. We need to recognize that driving is NOT some kind of atomistic, consequence free liberty. Driving is a privilege for those who have demonstrated, and continue to demonstrate, that they can operate a vehicle without endangering other drivers and/or pedestrians. The law should have the right to place any restrictions on the activity, especially if those restrictions ensure a safer driving experience for not just the driver but his potential crash victims as well!
— Josh Xiong · Jul 20, 01:35 AM · #
The thing is that talking on a cell phone while driving is dangerous for the same reason as talking to someone in the car is dangerous – and, IIRC, to the same extent. The cell phone itself isn’t the distraction – the conversation is. We’re not about to ban having a conversation with a passenger, though.
— Mark Thompson · Jul 20, 03:03 PM · #
What about eating in the car? I wonder if any studies have been done comparing the danger of consuming a burger, fries and coke while driving to the dangers of driving with a .08 BAC and of driving while texting. My guess is that eating carries at least the same amount of potential for distraction as cell phone use, if not more (spills, dropped food, etc.) But I doubt that America will be banning drive-throughs or eating a burger behind the wheel any time soon.
— Karl · Jul 20, 03:39 PM · #
Mark, my understanding of the research is that talking to someone in the car isn’t as distracting as a cell phone. Not sure why that is, guessing a person in the car is aware of the situation and is quieter when traffic gets bad, during intersections, that sort of thing.
http://www.howwedrive.com/2008/12/04/hands-free-is-not-brain-free/
— Brendon · Jul 20, 04:03 PM · #
I’m more comfortable giving the government power to regulate chemical intoxication than I am giving them the right to regulate mental distraction.
And this is one of those things in which, when I encounter someone who doesn’t see it that way, I’ve got nothing to say—all I can do is stare at them and marvel.
But, since there’s dubious stats and quetionable lab experiments all round, let’s run the same thought experiment with talking to passengers. Suppose it’s just as dangerous as .08 BAC. Should the cops be able to pull you over if they see your lips moving?
— Consumatopia · Jul 20, 06:37 PM · #
Consumatopia,
It may sound unreasonable, but if that’s where the research leads us, then we should follow it. I doubt it will, but I’m playing along here. The point is this: When you drive, your bad habits impose negative externalities upon others. You don’t just endanger yourself but other motorists and pedestrians. I’m of the belief that the government should get out of our lives when it comes to self-inflicted harm. But dangerous driving, in any form, is not about self-inflicted harm, is it?
— Josh Xiong · Jul 21, 06:35 AM · #
Josh Xiong says: “When you drive, your bad habits impose negative externalities upon others.”
That’s what matters.
If you’re driving circles in your back yard or pulling up and down your driveway, I don’t care if you want to talk on your phone while eating a cheeseburger, checking a map, finding your favorite Ace of Base song on your iPod, and assembling a marinade for your award-winning rib recipe. Drive through your garage door, run over your cat, get catapulted into your lovely rose-adorned trellis. I applaud your awesome exercise of your “freedoms”. Way to go!
What I care about is that, even if I’m paying full attention to the road, your idiotic freedom soup is not only out of my control but taking your driving out of your control. Is it really just a coincidence that the vast majority of truly idiotic and careless events I experience on the road seem to lead to my yelling at or flicking off an unaware boob on their cell. Of course, only rarely do I even get the satisfaction of their recognition of my reaction, as they’ve clearly got more important things to do than be aware of their surroundings.
Of course, there are lots of just plain bad drivers. They, too, put us all at risk. And, regarding that, I’ll add that regular driving tests should be mandated.
Ultimately, though, I think many people’s inability to see the reasonableness of cell phone driving bans is symptomatic of the same utter disregard for others’ existences that leads to people in line at a coffee shop giving the ‘just one sec’ gesture while others wait for their conversation about the dog getting out again to end.
I don’t care about idiots. But idiots become assholes when their idiocy affects others.
— James · Jul 21, 05:03 PM · #
1. When inebriated, you are impaired for the entire trip, but when talking on the phone you are only impaired for the length of the call. True. But the total number of person-hours for people driving while phoning in the USA has got to be a couple orders of magnitude greater than the number of person hours spent driving drunk. So from a public health perspective, you could probably save 100x more lives by outlawing phoning/texting than you do by outlawing drunk driving.
2. On the other hand, the benefit to drunk driving is pretty minimal (the convenience of not having to find a ride home once in a while). But the benefit to allowing people to talk on the phone while driving is more substantial. I’ve even seen some people claim that the economic benefit (the boost to productivity) of allowing people to conduct business on the phone while driving outweighs the economic costs of all the extra accidents.
As crass as that sounds, we make those kinds of cost/benefit trade-offs related to safety all the time. For instance, we could drastically reduce the number of highway deaths if we enforced a maximum speed limit of 35 MPH all the time. But I think most people would say the costs there outweigh the benefits.
I suspect that as cell phone use and other kinds of connectivity become more entrenched in our culture (i.e. when today’s teens get to voting age), banning cell phone use while driving may come to seem as ridiculous as a nationwide speed limit of 35 MPH.
— Michael Straight · Jul 21, 05:52 PM · #
You know, I’m not even sure talking on the phone while driving is really all that productive. We live in an age where multi-tasking is the norm, and that takes a serious hit to our productivity. I’ll wager that if we managed our time properly (such as not checking this blog for comments so often, as I’m guilty of!), we’d 1) get all our business done at work and 2) get home faster because we AREN’T driving and tele-conferencing at the same time.
— Josh Xiong · Jul 22, 01:09 AM · #
James is right. I would add that the legislators who are always prating about “freedom” when it comes to dangerous driving are often the first ones to support draconian penalties for drug use or other harmless activities in a private setting.
— Skye Winspur · Jul 22, 01:17 AM · #